If I had a hammer

I attended the American Ethical Union's Lay Leadership Summer School in North Carolina this past August. It was a "mountaintop" experience on several levels, not least because we were in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, staying at a resort and learning center called The Mountain.  A part of the training that I and 19 other ethical humanists from across the country undertook included breaking out into teams to create "End of Day Ceremonies," part talent show, part creative rethinking of how we celebrate and mark transitions in our local societies.

My team included six people from congregations of differing sizes and disparate communities.  What we had in common, however, was music.  Not everyone saw themselves as "a singer," but everyone was game to try.  Not only were they willing to sing in public, they were willing to rewrite the lyrics of favorite songs to communicate ethical culture.  We presented our "ceremony" as a cabaret with much participation from the audience--singing along, dancing, general hooting and hollering.  It was, we thought, replicable for other societies:

• select an occasion
• set the (desired) scene
• gather a few volunteers to start a song
• project the new lyrics on a screen so the audience can sing along
• enjoy

This is not the kind of performance that needs to be perfect or fancy or even all that good.  Exuberance can make up for a few flatted notes--assuming the audience ever sings softly enough for anyone to notice.  It was all about fun and the "joy of ethical."  We even called our cabaret "Felix's Joy Joint" and required a "secret password" to get in.  The password:  "Don't postpone joy!"

My own performance took a slightly different tack.  (Surprise, surprise!)  I knew what I wanted to sing.  Was thrilled that I would get to sing.  Loved every minute of it.  And what I sang was "If I Had a Hammer," pretty much in the style of Peter, Paul and Mary.

Why this old song?  Why not change the words to "be more ethical"?  Because of this:



Part of our "performance" was to tell our story.  How did we come to ethical culture, what does ethical culture mean to us, what about ethical culture keeps us coming back for more?  Each of us had different stories to tell.  My story, for that day, came from the deep distress that is calling me to action, ethical action, to make our world better, more humane, safer for human beings.

In 1970, the images in the video above were splashed across America.  Armed soldiers shot down American college students who were protesting the War in Vietnam.  They shot down protesters as well as random bystanders, including one fellow in a phone booth who was calling his mom to tell her that, no, he was not part of that protest and not to worry.  I, too, was on a college campus in 1970.  Not protesting.  Not too knowledgeable about much outside of my chosen field of study and the work that I needed to be doing to get my next degree.

Then I heard the news:  "They're killing college students."  I saw the images.  I realized that things were happening that could cost me my life, so I had better figure out what they were pretty damned quick.  So I joined the march.  And I manned the barricades with my sign.  And I helped keep the campus radio station going with my editorial skills.  And . . . I was changed.  (This is how you radicalize people, by the way.)

Years of various levels of activism and political involvement later, I was again asleep to the world around me.  My life was consumed with personal grief and recovery.  I could not watch or read the news--my own pain was too much for that.  I did, however, eventually find that famous Road to Recovery and read the news now and then.  I was, however, clueless on the morning of June 12.  June was Gay Pride Month.  I wore my Freedom Rings to our Sunday Meeting at Ethical Culture of Austin and made some bland announcement about "awareness" and "being a good ally."  It was only on the way home that I happened to turn on the radio.

Forty-nine dead.   And I was awakened.

What my waking eyes saw were things that had certainly been going on a long time--often out of my line of sight even before I lost family members and began the never-ending process of grieving.  LGBTQ.  Latinx.  Police violence.  Religious radicalism--of all sorts.  Hate and oppression and discrimination and dirty tricks and . . . it just doesn't end, does it?  But now I see it, as if anew, and am determined to try to make a difference.

So, in those beautiful mountains and that ramshackle "resort," in humidity that exceeds what Houston can do, in a welcoming room of ethical humanists, I told my story of two awakenings and how I felt that ethical humanists, joined in ethical action, could make a difference.  And I sang.  And we sang.



For me, this was a mountaintop experience because I got to sing out loud what I had been humming and softly singing to myself for weeks.  It was a mountaintop as well because I was heard--not merely as a chance to sing, which meant a lot to me--but as a voice, calling out those words:  Danger, Warning, Love.  And it was a mountaintop because I know that others share that sense of danger, are calling out warnings, and exclaiming that Justice, Freedom, and Love for each other are essential to our survival as a nation.

Seeing injustice is an ethical obligation

As ethical humanists, we talk about injustice and its many faces and the choices we have to correct it.  As humans, we bog down on priorities and strategies and "getting it."

In the past weeks, I have been much involved in these discussions--observing, listening, talking, and writing.  My correspondence has grown substantially, and now it is time to come back home to the Hoedown to work it out in my own mind, at my keyboard.  The weeks have been full.  St. Louis for the 101st AEU Assembly. The Mountain near Highlands, NC, for the AEU's 2016 Lay Leadership School. Family.  Adventures in travel.  Making connections with other ethical societies and with the roots of the movement.  Throughout all this busy-ness have run the threads of social justice--specifically racial justice, criminal justice, and the occasional stray mention of feminism/womanism.

Where do we start to act?  Why, indeed, must we act at all, especially when our own lives are not affected by these conflicts but rather by others, perhaps based on economics or age or some other damned thing?   Here's a thought:

As ethical humanists, we commit to making the world a better place so that in and by that process we make ourselves better humans.  We are, then, obliged to look at the world around us--our home, our neighborhood, our community, our country, our world--with eyes that appreciate what is good and just but also identify what is corrupt and unjust. 

The first step in fighting injustice, I would say, is first to see it.

We often wear blinders in our daily lives, protecting ourselves from pain, getting in ruts with our comfortable routines, not seeing the suffering of others unless we are slapped with one of those late night commercials about hunger or animal abuse.  I change the channel, so much do I resist feeling that pain. But there is injustice all around us, begging to be seen. 

• Why does my neighbor keep having broken bones, falls, bruises, depression? 
• What does this article I am reading about black people being shot by police mean for my community?  Does it happen here?  
• If water scarcity and drought is a root cause of the violence in Syria, can such a thing happen here?  
• I am doing a good thing by serving meals at the homeless shelter, but why are these people homeless?

Simply being aware of the signals that something might be wrong can be a start.  If we cannot see injustice, then we can do nothing to overcome it. Seeing the signals and recognizing them as signals, we can then begin learn more about it and the problems that are being signaled.

"Black Lives Matter"--tee shirt, button, statement--is a signal that something is wrong--not only in the black community but in the white community that surrounds it.  When someone cannot understand that signal, cannot see that it is communicating something important, that too is a signal of something wrong.  It becomes a problem ignored, a wrong unrighted.  Worse, it becomes a problem prolonged and increased.  

How do we see?

Well, we look.  We scan our environment for threats--this isn't safe, that could be hurtful.  We look for anomalies--something is out of place, not right. We look for balance--the fairness that may be the most fundamental of all human values. Maybe we should expand our search beyond ourselves and our families to others in our community/world, even including strangers in our protective vision?

We interpret what we see.  That's the part about "getting it."  We tend to interpret the signals around us in personal terms.  Personal would include ourselves, our family, our friends--and moving out beyond the circle of known persons to larger entities, still "circles" to which we "belong."  We use familiar words and concepts and experiences and knowledge to interpret the signals we get so that we can read them in terms that we understand.  Not everyone uses those words or shares those experiences.  Seeing injustice will sometimes include a new perspective on what we are looking at.  That new perspective may include active study of an issue to learn more or something as simple as listening so that we can see things better.

Here's a fairly mundane example.  It's about wallpaper, but "wallpaper" eventually became a code word with my late husband that stopped a budding conflict because one of us remembered what happened when we shopped for wallpaper for the bathroom.  Well, it was a matter of taste.  I wanted the foil with butterflies (this was in the 80's!) and he wanted the stripes.  Things got tense.  We were starting to get a little more heated and a little louder and realized that our "discussion" not going well in the wallpaper/paint store.  We decided to take it over to the McDonald's across the street and try to work it out with some ice cream. And so we did, finally reaching the dumbfounding realization that he was talking about the master bath and I was talking about the guest bathroom.   We were arguing over nothing, since I was fine with stripes in the master, and he was fine with butterflies for the guests. From then on, for more than thirty years, one of us could say "wallpaper," and the other would stop to make sure that we were actually talking about the same subject. 

The point of the wallpaper story is that interpretation of data, including signals about injustice, can depend upon point of view.  "Getting it" always includes knowing the point of view from which you are "seeing."  It usually includes recognizing that more than one point of view is looking at the problem.  It should include sharing points of view until everyone can really see the same thing.

Seeing injustice, I have said, is an ethical obligation.  I also think that it is an ethical action.

What are you seeing?

Labor Day is a day for ethical actions

Labor Day is that awkward holiday that ends summer and begins a season of month after month of national holidays.  It is also a day of significance for workers in the US:

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. (US Department of Labor)

As a national holiday, it was established by Congress in 1894, after the majority of states had already established holidays in honor of Labor.  In the anti-union (in, oh, so many ways) South, it is a good time for shopping the sales and alcohol-related highway deaths.

I've been thinking about labor and wages and such since coming back from the AEU's 101st Assembly in St. Louis.  While the Assembly program was focused on the theme of "Bending the Arc of History Toward Justice," there were resolutions on other matters that also got some attention in small briefing sessions and in the business meeting.  One was the Living Wage resolution.  It's worth a read.  And it's worth knowing that an earlier draft of the resolution focused on raising the minimum wage to $15.  After some discussion, the makers agreed to change the resolution to support a living wage--the amount of money that a person must earn to support their family if they are the sole provider.

Here is the current living wage estimate for Travis County.  Less than $15 for a single adult, but considerably more for adult + child, a family situation for many in Travis County.  Indeed, thirty-three per cent of children in Travis County live in single parent households.

Living Wage Calculation for Travis County, Texas

Hourly Wages	1 Adult	1 Adult 1 Child
Living Wage	$10.72	$22.64
Poverty Wage	$5.00	$7.00
Minimum Wage	$7.25	$7.25

10 more columns

Living Wage Calculation for Travis County, Texas

livingwage.mit.edu/counties/48453

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A living wage is not all that matters to the workers in our community. Workplace safety.  Fair treatment.  Transportation.  Working hours/days.  I'm sure there's more.  We have a holiday right now, and I'm all for that, but I think there is more that needs to be done to see that workers at the lower end of the pay scale get a fair deal.  Still what can I do that would make any difference?

One thing I see a lot of is outright abuse of people working--for little money--in a service capacity.  Waitstaff.  Sales clerks/cashiers.  Others who help take care of our needs in public and in private.  The abuse comes when we think we have been ill-served.  Something is not perfect.  Service is too slow.   Whatever it is that triggers our (false) conviction that we have somehow been disrespected, mistreated, or otherwise taken down from our (assumed) royal throne.  I could just say, "Get over yourself," but as an ethical humanist I want to point out that we are bound to respect the inherent worth in all human beings. A mistake in service is just that--a mistake--not a catastrophic assault on our personal worth. Courteous, non-confrontational language ("Please take this bag as well," "I'd like more ice in tea, please" "I think there's an error in this receipt") can keep things flowing smoothly and acknowledge the worth of the person as well as the service. Instead of abusing those who help us, we reduce at least one source of stress in their workplace and respect their humanity.

I have also seen--just about all of my life--the chinchy, cheap tactic of under-tipping.  We can argue that the "owners" of whatever service is being provided should pay better wages.  I'm not sure how that would work out with portage services in transportation centers, but I know it would raise the price of meals in most restaurants.  Lower prices come from low wages.  We eat fine meals while the servers can't even afford a place to live.  We work in offices cleaned by people who are homeless.  Am I kidding?  Austin Resource Center for the Homeless provides day and overnight beds for workers in our downtown businesses.  They are simply not paid enough to live close enough to their jobs to be able to work there.  (I mentioned transportation, didn't I?)  Look at the etiquette of tipping and then consider how tips are considered, in reality, not merely an indication of quality of service but as a necessary part of the worker's pay--in lieu of actual wages.  Got poor service?  Say so--nicely.  Ask for any corrections you think necessary, including sharing with management that some additional training is needed.  Don't stiff the worker when circumstances are beyond his/her control.  Remember that the time given to your care is a part of their workday for which they need to be paid.  Then think about your part of their living wage.

What I'm writing about is not a big deal.  This is really a very small part of our labor force and a small part of their lives.  We can advocate for better policies that give workers--all of us--better lives, better conditions, better incomes.  Nothing here argues against that--and much more can be argued in favor of it--but small things have big consequences.  A little courtesy can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is working in difficult circumstances.  A proper tip can help make a struggling family a little more secure.  You will be making a small effort, but you will still be engaging in ethical action.  Try it. You'll like it.  (And share this with your sister-in-law.)